Acting CoP: Hot spots starting to get cold

The Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS) will also continue the use of the weekly Comstat (computer generated statistics) meetings to sustain patrols in hot spots and develop intelligence systems for targeting and preventing assassination attempts by specific known offenders on specific known victims.

Williams, the keynote speaker at yesterday’s first session of the 3rd Biennial Department of Behavioural Sciences Post Graduate Research Conference, University of the West Indies, St Augustine Campus took the opportunity to extend condolences to the family, friends and associates of Waterloo Secondary student Jesse Beephan, who was found dead on Wednesday.

“His death reflects the challenges that Trinidad and Tobago society is confronted with, and for which we all have a part to play in fixing the problems,” he said.

On the objectives to be carried out over the two-year period, he said, some experimentation with some measure of success had been carried out in pilots periodically during 2013 to 2016.

A timeline has been set for implementation which will require a budget, Williams said, and the TTPS will seek Government’s funding. The haemostatic bandages on victims will first be rolled out, followed by the launch of the use of the body cameras, and then the offenders’ focused patrols.

“All three would be fully implemented with revisions by the end of the two years,” he said.

He noted the TTPS conducted a pilot of the body video cameras in the Enterprise district in the Central Division where there was an increase in violence. Fifty-two officers of the Task Force were exposed to the cameras. There were some challenges, he said and the TTPS will be revisiting the experiment in 2017.

Asked about opposition to the use of the cameras, Williams said, the union representing police officers sees it as an opportunity for the police to tell their side of the story as often civilians record only the use of force by the police without knowing what would have led to it.

Asked whether the success achieved in hot spot areas due to evidence-based policing was due to the displacement of crime in other areas, Williams said, “We do not have empirical data to support it.” There is a perception out there, he said, that there might be in Trinidad some level of crime displacement as would have happened in the Port-of-Spain Division, and specifically at Besson Police Station where over 2016 and 2015 there was a 50 percent reduction in violent crimes.

In 2016, there were 117 incidents of violent crimes in the Portof- Spain Division compared to 250 in 2015 which, Williams said, “is the most significant reduction in violent crimes in the history of the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service.” Nevertheless, to determine whether there is any evidence of crime displacement taking place as crime is being addressed, he said, “We have to do the research to back it.” While measuring homicides, shootings and violent crimes in the hot spots, she said, “We have discovered in the hot spot locations, and it really touches on the issue of displacement, that the hot spot locations are generally starting to get cold.”